Christianity

[seeds]

Okay then, PN asylum patient Alexis Jacobi.

No, NO! I am the doctor here!

Do you have a Ten Week Psychological Recovery Email Program?!?

Now, now, try to stay calm, but wasn't it just a few weeks ago when this picture of you was taken?...



After the nice young man in white escorts you back to your room, you can tell him all about your "email program."
_______

[Alexis Jacobi]

After the nice young man in white escorts you back to your room, you can tell him all about your "email program."

Seeds, that's room service! I ordered escargots! I intend to pair them with a dry French Burgundy (unless you have another suggestion).

J'ai très faim et j'ai juste une minute avant que je doive retourner à la médecine! Souhaitez-moi bon appétit . . .

"Such a sour note, John! You are way off-key!

[Age]

So if Jesus the Christ is of God, where is he Jacobi?

Not on Earth having company with sages? Popping out for a meal at a restaurant? Being challenged for a game of pool?

Where is the lunacy in that if his existence was real..surely it still is?

Most Esteemed Atto. I will try to provide an answer however I am pretty sure you are not in the *get an answer* frame of mind.

I doubt you have read anything I have written. Still, what I say is that Jesus, Krishna, any image of god, and all concepts about god, are simply conceptual organizations that we (conceptualizing humans) interpose between ourselves (extremely limited beings reasoning through a flesh instrument) and something that is utterly beyond explication: Existence. I use the Sanskrit term (*sat*: being, existence) to refer to that.

Our conceptions are not 'reality'. Our stories are not realities. One has to determine what the story means in order to understand why the portrayal, the picture, has been fabricated.

So, your next question may be: "OK, but how do you explain all the experiences I have had which to me are undeniably real?!"

That is a complex question. It is tough to begin an answer. And to do so I have to start with metaphors. The metaphor most of use is Plato's Cave. What we *see* is a subjective projection. So what Atto has seen, and experienced, is a subjective view, story, interpretation of mysterious (but not unreal and not unimportant) inner experiences.

What you perceive, and what I perceive (having had my own experiences) is something very hard to define. But it arises in us and is a part of us.

What took you on all those strange and painful journeys? Call it what you will. Give it whatever name you will. But I call it The Self.

Through such a concept I am enabled to understand the experiences of so many people and also to discern 'value & meaning' as it is manifest between different traditions. In a sense I reject all Stories -- they are all ridiculous embellishments -- and yet won't dismiss any one of them nor necessarily set one up against another.

But do you reject 'your' OWN Stories?

If no, then your CLAIM here that you reject ALL Stories is False.

Also, and according to your OWN 'logic' and CLAIM, your OWN stories are NOT realities anyway.

The amount of CONTRADICTIONS and INCONSISTENCIES the peoples in the days when this was being written would make without ANY recognition was actually pretty amazing.

But this was the result of saying just about ANY 'thing' when 'TRYING TO' back up and support BELIEFS or VIEWS, which OBVIOUSLY could NOT even be True.

[Alexis Jacobi]

But do you reject 'your' OWN Stories?

Are we, my really really odd friend, talking of the same thing when I use the term story and when you use it?

Can you identify and present back to me what you consider to be *a story I am telling* that is comparable, let's say, to the Gospel story of the incarnation of god in the form of Jesus the Christ? Or that of Krishna? Or any embellished, metaphysically-laden mythology?

Or, do you mean that when I offer an explanation (tentative as it may be) that you take that to be a story?

Once we are CLEAR about THESE THING, you charming lunatic wackadoodle, then I can answer your QUESTION.

[Age]

But do you reject 'your' OWN Stories?

Are we, my really really odd friend, talking of the same thing when I use the term story and when you use it?

I am NOT sure. And, we will NEVER KNOW until CLARIFICATION of, in what way you USE the term 'story' is SOUGHT.

But one would HAVE TO HAVE 'interest', FIRST.

Can you identify and present back to me what you consider to be *a story I am telling* that is comparable, let's say, to the Gospel story of the incarnation of god in the form of Jesus the Christ? Or that of Krishna? Or any embellished, metaphysically-laden mythology?

Or, do you mean that when I offer an explanation (tentative as it may be) that you take that to be a story?

Once we are CLEAR about THESE THING, you charming lunatic wackadoodle, then I can answer your QUESTION.

It was 'you', "alexis jacobi" who came up with the 'story' and has the concept, and claim, that 'our conceptions are not 'reality', and, our stories are not realities'.

So, are your OWN concepts NOT 'reality' also?

Or, is it just "other's" concepts, which are NOT 'reality'?

By the way, while you MAINTAIN that a concept, story, and/or claim is a 'metaphysically-laden mythology', then, OBVIOUSLY, they WILL REMAIN UNREAL 'stories', to 'you.

[Agent Smith]

We should give Pepe his phone

"Give Pepe his phone" whined Paula. "No can do Paula. He cheats. What if he gets caught, like last time?" Kevin responded angrily. "I know this sounds crazy, about 1 in a million odds of happening, but what if there's an emergency? His mom's not keepin' well and he might be needed or, worst comes to worst, informed!" Paula opined. "You're right. We should give Pepe his phone", Kevin concurred. "He also has to call aunt Jane, remember?" Paula doubled the stakes.

Where can I buy the whole book?

[attofishpi]

So if Jesus the Christ is of God, where is he Jacobi?

Not on Earth having company with sages? Popping out for a meal at a restaurant? Being challenged for a game of pool?

Where is the lunacy in that if his existence was real..surely it still is?

Most Esteemed Atto. I will try to provide an answer however I am pretty sure you are not in the *get an answer* frame of mind.

My less esteemed Jacobi (ps u r more esteemed than I among the people of the forum, me morseo among sages), there is more chance that smurfs will land from planet Zorg and take over the planet than the day you have an answer for me that is not a wangled pile of waffle.

I doubt you have read anything I have written.

Naaw, don't be sad..I've read plenty and actually have enjoyed more than you obviously think.

Still, what I say is that Jesus, Krishna, any image of god, and all concepts about god, are simply conceptual organizations that we (conceptualizing humans) interpose between ourselves (extremely limited beings reasoning through a flesh instrument) and something that is utterly beyond explication: Existence. I use the Sanskrit term (*sat*: being, existence) to refer to that.

Our conceptions are not 'reality'. Our stories are not realities. One has to determine what the story means in order to understand why the portrayal, the picture, has been fabricated.

My friend that is nonsense. Anything we perceive is our reality, even if we are mere brains in a VAT. I don't like the term 'stories' as it suggest fiction.

So, your next question may be: "OK, but how do you explain all the experiences I have had which to me are undeniably real?!"

That is a complex question. It is tough to begin an answer. And to do so I have to start with metaphors. The metaphor most of use is Plato's Cave. What we *see* is a subjective projection. So what Atto has seen, and experienced, is a subjective view, story, interpretation of mysterious (but not unreal and not unimportant) inner experiences.

What you perceive, and what I perceive (having had my own experiences) is something very hard to define. But it arises in us and is a part of us.

What took you on all those strange and painful journeys? Call it what you will. Give it whatever name you will. But I call it The Self.

Through such a concept I am enabled to understand the experiences of so many people and also to discern 'value & meaning' as it is manifest between different traditions. In a sense I reject all Stories -- they are all ridiculous embellishments -- and yet won't dismiss any one of them nor necessarily set one up against another.

Sure. But you didn't even come close answering the question(s).

Sage\God have advised me directly more than once that Jesus the Christ did do, the crucifiction\resurrection. Thus, I believe Christ to exist as man here on Earth, as does the sage who advised me, that he (sage) lives in California.

So. (and again)

Why do you see it as lunacy that I believe Christ exists right now, here on Earth and that one day ol' atto might get to have a game of pool with the dude?

[Alexis Jacobi]

But do you reject 'your' OWN Stories?

Are we, my really really odd friend, talking of the same thing when I use the term story and when you use it?

I am NOT sure. And, we will NEVER KNOW until CLARIFICATION of, in what way you USE the term 'story' is SOUGHT.

It was 'you', "Alexis Jacobi" who came up with the 'story' and has the concept, and claim, that 'our conceptions are not 'reality', and, our stories are not realities'.

It is not a 'claim' that needs any defense at all. It is a statement about a fact that it is hard to argue against: the concepts that we hold in our minds are not the reality itself or the realities.

I asked you, moron, if you understood my use of the term Story and the distinction I draw between a 'story' as in a religious mythology, and a description. To say 'the moon orbits the Earth' is such a description, and is not a Story. But to say that the Moon is the ever-concealing-herself lover of the Sun is a Story and one with mythological implications. Story laid over 'reality' if you wish.

I have written at length about an important dimension of human life and experience and I've referred to Richard Weaver and his phrase "our metaphysical dream of the world" (more here). The sentence can be examined in the context of his various essays on the ideas he presents. While I understand what Weaver means I must assume that you do not. However you could find out. Then you'd have made some progress in understanding something important.

In my view our 'metaphysical dreams' are vastly important and may also always be part of human nature, human being and experience, but I also believe we need to see them from a 'distance'. But to have 'distance' also implies, in a sense, skepticism, or an unwillingness to give oneself over completely to *belief*. So distance as I define it is somewhat problematic to 'belief'.

You are aware, you drooling dope, that Immanuel (chief protagonist on this thread) is an absolute or true believer in his Christian mythology. He believes it so much that it is not a mythology. He actuallt believes that the god he defines underpins Reality -- indeed is associated so deeply with Reality that he (that god) is given not only being but personality. That god is hearing what I am writing and disapproves of course. In Immanuel's view were I to go on in this vein I will eventually be relegated to the shelves of a Living Hell.

There you have literalism applied, with no 'distance', to a metaphysical dream. He cannot 'stand back' from his belief. He has no 'distance' from it. He is subsumed into his belief-system as religious fanatics are.

Now, and this is odd but not really so much when you examine it, Atto has also involved himself, wilfully or unwillingly, in a True Believer platform. He does not appear to have distance from his 'belief'. He has a spirit-entity that communicates with him and. according to what he says, this entity has a 'real' or tangible and possibly a physical existence on Earth right now. Same with his (extremely personalized and non-theological) Imago of 'Jesus the Christ' (Atto's own term). Atto is offended when people read his fantasies (or the metaphysical dreams or the psychic dreams that have intruded, boldly, into his consciousness and are declared as 'real') and can't go along with him. Meaning, they begin to wonder if he is perhaps a couple of cards short of a full deck.

The mere insinuation that this might be true (in an age where thousands and indeed millions of people are on the verge of open mental illness and as many are actually defined as 'mentally ill' and their imagined fantasies intrude boldly into their conscious living) pushes him to react. And in this reaction, through this reaction, he has created his internet and forum personality which argues this and that, or that and some other, as the case may be (and depending on the quantity of beer in his belly).

So what I say is a) our metaphysical dreams are not irrelevant, and I am not opposed necessarily to 'spirit guides' and 'voices of counsel', but b) yet I do think that the phenomena needs to be handled carefully by a 'sober-minded practitioner'. What is sobriety? Well, that would have to be defined, no?

In the larger frame of things a Metaphysical Dream (Christianity is such a larger dream) takes on a somewhat different form than, for example, that of the case of someone who 'hears the voice of Jesus the Christ' saying this or saying that. The metaphysical dream of Christianity is one involving a sense of justice, fairness, decent treatment of people, kindness, love in the family, and the invocation of a Spirit that is seen as *the author of all good things*. But which also takes a decided stand against what is bad, cruel, malicious, terrorizing, brutal, and given to immersion in processes of mutability (the sensual and voluptuous world).

All of these values can be, and have been, defined in theological terms. That is as canons of ethics. If I 'believe in' a canon of ethics I may do so because I declare myself 'to be a Christian' but not, necessarily, because I take all elements of the belief-system as 'absolutely true and real'. Though I admit to a fuzzy area here, and to talk about that is complex.

So, what I am talking about (most of you cannot uphold any conversational impetus on your own because you are bickering mental cases for whom the forum is a platform for the exteriorization of neurosis) is entirely germane to the ideas and views I have presented here for months. Whether you get any of it is totally irrelevant to me. There are at least a few capable of reading and understanding.

Talking in this way involves self-analysis. Neurotic children with narcissistic tendencies have no need to engage in self-analysis. For that reason the conversations I desire to have are for adults.

Now, since you have the floor how will you manifest yourself today?

[Alexis Jacobi]

My friend that is nonsense. Anything we perceive is our reality, even if we are mere brains in a VAT. I don't like the term 'stories' as it suggest fiction.

I do not care what you like or don't like -- the importance of the issue does not hinge on that -- and if you cannot understand how Story intrudes so boldly into human life, and indeed is what stands behind both religious idealism and religious fanaticism, then at that point I cannot help you or counsel you.

But I insist that what the term Story implies must be understood. I use it both critically and constructively. And if you do not understand why critique is relevant -- there I cannot help you either. My position is not entirely critical though. It is constructive. And if you cannot understand the constructive element, and take it as a package along with the critical, again I cannot help you (meaning my discursive position will be unintelligible to you and you will take it as 'negative' and react as if your 'self' is being assaulted).

By saying "anything we perceive is our reality" is to assert that whatever a person perceives is reality. Sure, I will grant you that a raving lunatic, whether in a body or in a vat, is indeed perceiving something. But I will not, and indeed cannot, agree with you that it is realness.

So, in my view, your incapacity to make this distinction is part of the reason your discourse comes across as potentially deranged. Or simply deranged. You seem to believe that what you perceive is reality. But I suggest to you that your perception, however compelling (to you), is not reality. It is a perceptual interface.

Our 'subjective perceptual interface' must not be seen as 'absolutely real'. If you grant that then someone involved in active and overpowering delusions (or psychosis) is capable of giving us a real picture of things. And that is obviously false. They give us pictures though, with greater or lesser degrees of connection to 'the real world'. I've listened to the jibber-jabber of those caught in such psychological manifestations and they sometimes say things with poetic value, if you understand what I mean. They make all sorts of allusive connections between things much as poets do. But these are not 'reality'.

So it requires a sober individual to sort these things through. And you, Atto, are quite far from giving evidence of being 'sober'. You seem startlingly careless with your own consciousness.

You also present yourself on a philosophy forum where your presentation will be examined carefully and analytically and yet at times you react as a religious fanatic would -- when of course you are not reacting 'tipsily' which might be something different. This is peculiar and requires critical examination.

If you can't stand the heat get out of the damned kitchen.

Here, here is a Primer Course I think it relevant we all study . . .

[Gary Childress]

Due to recent developments in my life and around the globe, I have come to suspect that there is, perhaps, a God and that God is not with me. If God chooses sides based on who will prostrate themselves before him. Then God is no different than most tyrants. The world, the universe, would be one large tyranny. Democracy and free will would be nothing more than illusions that mean nothing to God. If that is the case, then God means nothing to me.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Since god is not as you think god is, it is the Idea of god that requires our investigation. If definitions of god are encapsulations of metaphysical concepts and apperceptions, but are also subjective, no solidified god-definition can serve us now.

You, obviously, are in a strange post-Christian current. You are drawn to it and then repelled. Cultural and familial anchors and old patterns of belief seem to control you.

Is this not just the right moment to sign up for my Getting Clear® Ten Week Email Course? BTW I have brought on Renaud Camus who will assist with the cultural integration section of the course. You surely won’t want to miss out!

[promethean75]

Gary that's exactly what Iblis the shaitan (a class of jinn) thought. He wuz like wait bro how are u going to expect me to bow to u but then u get all upset when I expect humans to bow to me?

[Gary Childress]

Gary that's exactly what Iblis the shaitan (a class of jinn) thought. He wuz like wait bro how are u going to expect me to bow to u but then u get all upset when I expect humans to bow to me?

I'd never heard of the guy. This is what I just read and found interesting on a Wiki article regarding Iblis.

In the alternative account, God created Iblis from the fires beneath the seventh earth.[3] Worshipping God for thousands of years, Iblis ascended to the surface, whereupon, thanks to his pertinacious servitude, he rose until he reached the company of angels in the seventh heaven.[3] When God created Adam and ordered the angels to bow down, Iblis, being a jinn created from fire, refused, and disobeyed God, leading to his downfall.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iblis

Basically, it's a story of a rebel who rose from the pits and then clashed with the local powers that be, likely because of the bitterness and hostility the rebel acquired from his lowly beginnings. It's simply people in an authoritarian caste society creating a story about someone who probably did just that in their society and got shot down. If a human being is a creature forever entangled in Earthly human hierarchy, then I'm not interested anymore in whoever or whatever created us and upholds that rule. I choose not to be just another ant in what amounts to an ant colony. If that means others are going to villainize or attack me for it, then there's nothing I can do to prevent it. I can't control their attitudes or behavior. I can only control my own. So be it.

[Gary Childress]

Since god is not as you think god is, it is the Idea of god that requires our investigation. If definitions of god are encapsulations of metaphysical concepts and apperceptions, but are also subjective, no solidified god-definition can serve us now.

You, obviously, are in a strange post-Christian current. You are drawn to it and then repelled. Cultural and familial anchors and old patterns of belief seem to control you.

Is this not just the right moment to sign up for my Getting Clear® Ten Week Email Course? BTW I have brought on Renaud Camus who will assist with the cultural integration section of the course. You surely won’t want to miss out!

Sorry. Not interested.

[Walker]

Why. Not cynical enough?